Posted
by
Soulskill
on Thursday April 18, 2013 @03:25AM
from the find-safety dept.

A massive explosion took place around 8:50pm ET at a fertilizer plant in a small town in Texas. The cause of the explosion is not precisely known, but the plant was on fire beforehand. The casualty reports are tentative and expected to rise, but two people are dead and over 150 are injured. Firefighters responding to the initial fire are unaccounted for. Over a thousand residents have been evacuated from their homes. Officials are worried about the volatility of another tank at the plant, but also about the potential damage from exposure to anhydrous ammonia. The blast was heard in Dallas, 75 miles away. "There are lots of houses that are leveled within a two-block radius. A lot of other homes are damaged as well outside that radius." A brief YouTube video shows the explosion of the plant.

This is a very common method of city growth in Texas. Build something annoying/dangerous way out of city limits. People build close to it for jobs,cheap land, and since it's not incorporated, easier building rules. This happened around our local airport, now the people who knowingly built by the airport are bitching that airport wants to expand because 'it will be to noisy'. WTF people.

As always it likely would have been at the time. Then as the town expanded the plant would have been suddenly across the road. We've gone through the battles with town planners near a refinery here in Brisbane for the same reason. It's apparently prime land, yeah 500m from a 50t supply of HF acid.

Quite often when you see something, even something not particularly dangerous but more annoying like an airport, that is in a populated area and say "Why the hell didn't they build it out in the middle of nowhere?" the answer is often that they did. When they built it, there was nothing around, but things grew up around it, or grew nearer and nearer to it.

You watch an area over a couple decades and it can go from "a whole lot of nothing" to "very developed".

Still, if they have the letters "fluor" in them they must be the same thing, right. Them thar chemmerculs.

I could tell from the url that it's a nutter site.

It's not really a nutter site. They are just against the idea of adding small amounts of fluoride to drinking water just because people can't be arsed to brush their teeth. I kind of have a bit of sympathy for this to be honest even though I personally use fluoride toothpaste (some people don't even do that). I have this strange belief that if I want to let my teeth all go to shit that is my prerogative and the local company who supply me tap water have no business trying to prevent me from doing so.

Protesting the addition of toxins to drinking water is not the same as WANTING toxins added to one's drinking water. The overseers added fluoride to the water, and you act like the guy who wants his water as free of contaminants as possible is the crazy one. You ignored the main argument and substituted a straw man to make yours sound reasonable.

Back when I was a kid we had a flour mill not more than two blocks from my house(about 0.1km). Within roughly 0.25km there was also a highschool and a middleschool, and a grade school around 0.15km from it. Back before we moved to the same area, there was also a fertilizer plant just down the road roughly 0.3km. Industrial plants like what I mentioned and others, it wasn't all that uncommon for houses to spring up near where people worked.

Fertilizer plants are dangerous places. I am surprised that in such a sparsely populated part of Texas the plant wasn't further away from houses.

Knowing that the facility produced a product that could be explosive (especially after the Oklahoma City bombing by Tim McVeigh), they could have and indeed should have taken some engineering steps to protect not just workers but also the surrounding town.

I happen to live somewhat near the ATK facility which used to make the solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle and also makes the fuel used in other solid rocket missiles used by the military. It is intentionally put out in the middle of nowhere with

No, it will be ignored. I once reviewed a school in West Virginia and when I was done, I told the owner that his floors were only rated for about 1/2-2/3 of what they should be for a school building. He'd built the thing himself (it was constructed much like a pole barn) and hosted underprivileged city kids for year round programs, teaching them about the outdoors. His response: "We don't have codes in WV, I just need to know that it's safe."

I told him they had basically the same code as everywhere in the US (the International Building Code), but his county simply chose not to spend any money on enforcement. I also mentioned that if anything happened to the building, he would be held personally liable - as the builder - for violating the state building code. I wished him luck and went on my way. I no longer practice engineering in WV - it's just not worth it, as it's several hundred dollars a year to keep my license up.

Building codes don't address explosions like this. Even OSHA doesn't really have much way to require safety measures that would save people if an explosion occurred. BATFE isn't involved in fertilizer (afaik), though even in a manufacturing facility BATFE regs won't save people in the process area. These people will have died and their legacy will be nothing.

The cause of the explosion is not precisely known, but the plant was on fire beforehand.

Golly, do you think there's a connection?

"Explosion" can mean many things--from a pile of ammonium nitrate being detonated to failure of a tank or tube in an air compressor.

There is a world of difference between how you need to deal with an ammonium nitrate explosion ("Everything within a mile is flattened and on fire") vs rupture of an anhydrous ammonia tank ("Evacuate everyone 17 miles downwind".)

Contrary to what Hollywood may have led you to believe, things on fire do not normally explode. They normally just produce a lot of smoke and burn down. Seriously, go watch the video... it's a big fire, but it's just burning steadily and in a not-even-remotely explosive way... until from one frame to the next it flashes so bright it washes out nearly the entire light sensor of the camera.

Yes, obviously the fire is related to the explosion, thank you Captain Obvious. The question is, what about the situation even had the potential for such an incredible explosion? Because that shit is not normal for a fire. What part of "not precisely known" are you having trouble understanding? Also, as Phase Shifter pointed out, knowing exactly what blew up and possibly also knowing why is important for proper response to the incident.

The question is, what about the situation even had the potential for such an incredible explosion?

That'd be the fact that the massive fire was in a factory where they make explosive stuff.

The factory didn't make explosives, it only made fertilizers. It is stuff that like many chemicals can in some situations be explosive, no doubt.

If you think this was bad, you should see some grain silo explosions. That is just a bunch of dust in a tube where unfortunately a bad spark can cause the whole silo to explode in a fashion just like was seen on the video in the link in the original story post. That isn't even something remotely connected to explosives but just ordinary grain that otherwise you

The factory didn't make explosives, it only made fertilizers. It is stuff that like many chemicals can in some situations be explosive, no doubt.

fertilizers and explosives share a common trait:

lots of nitrogen

for the fertilizer, it's the bioavailability of nitrogen for plants that is the point

for explosives, the point is that nitrogen really, really wants to be N2 again

for explosives, AND fertilizer, when you pack a lot of nitrogen together in a chemical, and then heat it up, the nitrogen tends to figure out how to become happy N2 again, releasing a lot of energy in the process

a fertilizer factory is basically the same as an explosives factory, in r

Ammonium nitrate is initially produced as an aqueous solution, and the water is then boiled off using carefully designed heat exchangers.
The problem is that the resulting pure AN liquid will freeze if the temperature drops below ~170C but it decomposes increasing rapidly once the temperature rises above 200C, lower if the pH is too high or sensitising agents such as chlorides (salt) or oils are present. Decomposition can result in detonation when the AN is confined, and it's a significant hazard concern when designing or operating an ammonium nitrate plant or even just a large storage facility.

It was detected by seismic networks [usgs.gov]. Note that the most common reason for "earthquakes" at zero depth is a quarry explosion, so that's how they initially labeled it. They've since changed it to read simply "Explosion". Click the "did you feel it link" and you can see that some people felt it as if it were an earthquake. Strangely, they are north of the event. Either the waves propogated that way, or people south of the event saw the cloud and realized it was an explosion not a quake.

It was detected by seismic networks [usgs.gov]. Note that the most common reason for "earthquakes" at zero depth is a quarry explosion, so that's how they initially labeled it. They've since changed it to read simply "Explosion". Click the "did you feel it link" and you can see that some people felt it as if it were an earthquake. Strangely, they are north of the event. Either the waves propogated that way, or people south of the event saw the cloud and realized it was an explosion not a quake.

Here is how it looked dangerously close [youtube.com] (warning, the people taking this video were way too close so if you can't stomach listening to young girl in complete fear, don't watch that video all the way through) I'm guessing and hoping those people are okay being that the video is on YouTube.

Unlikely. Factory fires (This started off as a fire) happen all the time. This one was just unfortunate enough to happen where a metric shit tonne of amonium nitrate happened to be.

This wasn't an "unfortunate" accident. This was the result pure unabashed incompetence and greed. It's not like we don't know how far to space apart caches of volatile stuff having a high energy density in order to prevent massive explosions like this. For fuck's sake, do you think even the morons who sign up for the military would put ammo reserves all in one giant pile for safe keeping? No, that's fucking stupid. Stupid and a bit less expensive, but mostly stupid. The fire was an accident, but the

Yes. Timing was Coincidental and it was related to the Boston bomb attack: While the terrorist attack in Boston will likely result in less rights for civilians, the West, TX explosion won't cause corporations to be beholden to even basic zoning restrictions; The Boston explosions were committed by a small group of terrorists with the intent to kill, and strike fear into hearts of citizens, but the West explosion were caused by a large corporation on accident, and we should be terrified of their general recklessness, but we aren't. The Boston attack, like most terrorist threats, would have been exceedingly hard to prevent (esp. without stripping away the rights of all citizens), yet most all of the West, TX explosion injuries and casualties could have been easily avoidable by requiring such plants spend the money to relocate further from the towns they cause to spring up as they get filthy fucking rich. The perpetrator(s) of the Boston explosions may be found and put to justice for their crimes, but the rich bastards who are responsible for the West, TX explosion will get a sympathetic pat on the back, and at least a tax break in losses from Uncle Sam. The terrorists wounded many in their Boston attack, but the West, TX explosion was far more lethal and devastating. People will get right fucking pissed off about the terrorist attack in Boston, but they'll exhibit a disproportionate response of only remorse for the victims of the TX explosion.

The relevant metric is not only "people killed", but also "people scared" and "amount of disruption due to people being scared". The last two are massively higher with bombings in cities or of civilian infrastructure. Places that you can sabotage is also better protected than the average intersection.

That was one big freakin explosion. The cameraman must have been at least a couple of hundred meters away and flaming debris was zipping past him almost instantly. Still it's a fertiliser plant, explosive by its very nature, no reason to think there's any connection between this and Boston. Yet.

Interesting that just the other day we were discussing here about "exploitation" of social media sites etc. to drive traffic to "tech" sites after the Boston bombs.Here we have links to BBC, CNN & even Youtube?I assume like many/;ers I already get my "mainstream" news from the BBC etc. Do we need this?

Fertilizers are extremely dangerous and should be handled with more care.
A similar thing happened in my town 12 years ago. If was on 21/9/2001, so 10 days after 11/9/2001 and therefore nobody heard about it but it left some 30 people dead and a city in ruins. Look up AZF in Toulouse on the web to see what I'm talking about. They first blamed it on the terrorists and later admitted it was an industrial accident.
Like in Texas, the AZF factory was build out of the town but the town grown and it found itself in the middle of it. Poor urban planning.

I believe in this scenario there should be a plan to abandon the site and let it burn or blow up. And obviously there should be a buffer zone around the plant, as there are around airports. No residential, just commercial land.

Well, the explosion propagates at the speed of sound, so abandoning the site is not an option. In Toulouse, the explosion occurred when 2 chemical products entered in contact (ammonium and nitrate if I'm not mistaken)
It left a crater 200 meters wide. Although the biggest damage occurred near the factory, Steel girders were found 3km away, windows blown up 20 km away and the seismic activity was recorded in Paris (800 km away)

In this instance a fire preceded the explosion, so the plant could have been abandoned when the fire was discovered, if there had been no immediate threat to public safety. I agree that the idea doesn't work for all cases.

Here [wikipedia.org], listing 24 previous disasters, the largest of which [wikipedia.org] was also in Texas. You'd think they, of all places, would know to keep large quantities of ammonium nitrate away from population centers (or vice versa).

Scarily, some of those disasters were from when a large quantity of ammonium nitrate powder had solidified and people tried to break it up with explosives.

The news reports I'm seeing don't actually say it was an ammonium nitrate explosion in this case, although it seems a reasonable supposition.

The problem with economic growth, is that something like a $500M fertilizer plant brings lots of jobs. The people that work those jobs don't like driving 30 miles each way to get to work, so the town that used to be at a safe distance from the half-billion dollar industrial site grows towards it. Then the thing blows up and everyone asks "Why wasn't it in the middle of nowhere?"

True, but a serious disaster is an event of national interest. Even special interest websites like this one are, in addition to being news sources, are also community gathering locations. Which means, we gather here to talk about what's going on in the world. Is there profit to be made? Sure. But there's also a discussion to be had. And our view into this news event may differ from that of the popular media; For example, there are chemical engineers who read this site. They may have something to say about h

Valid—and normally I'd defend that point myself; the irony of such a recent story condemning other sites for doing the same thing, however, was just too tempting. (And many do have communities themselves, though obviously not as well-developed.)

Validâ"and normally I'd defend that point myself; the irony of such a recent story condemning other sites for doing the same thing, however, was just too tempting. (And many do have communities themselves, though obviously not as well-developed.)

Nobody ever said the new management doesn't regularly open their mouth and insert their foot.

I am more interested in what Slashdotters have to say on the subject than anyone else. Typically a story like this plays out as follows:NPR/BBC - here are the unbiased details of the storyBS news - OMG Explosion! Think of the children/town/nation! The government should do something/nothing!Slashdot - here are similar stories (ammonia nitrate-related disasters), chemical discussion, physics of the matter.

In this case, it has everything to do with tech. What failed on the plant's systems to cause this? Fertalizer plants are dangerous places, by nature, and (at least in my part of the world) have some hectic safety procedures and equipment up to shutting down if it looks like there is lightning anywhere near....

Was it human error? Equipment failure? We don't know, but everyone came here to speculate. So, yeah it belongs here.

I haven't noticed that.In Baghdad and other parts of central Asia huge bombs are set off on a weekly basis with scores of victims but Slashdot doesn't mention it. The odd bomb in the US will get a mention. Attacks in Europe or Russia only get mentioned if they are big. So it's just the spillover of regular news you'd expect from a US based site.

News for Nerds! There are other nerds than those who sling lines of code all day or design computers. Explosions are of interest to Chemical, Mechanical, Civil engineers, etc. EE's may also be interested depending on what was the ignition source.

Sure it is. But there has just been a terrorist attack in Boston which no group has taken responsibility for.

Terrorists do their stuff to send a message. If no one understands what the message is, it's a failure from their perspective. The obvious way to make people get the message, is to say what your message is.

In some subcultures, certain dates and events have special significance. Neo-nazis, for instance, have a habit of doing stuff on Hitler's or Hess' birthday. Because these days are special to them, they may either

* Suffer from the misconception that the date is special to everyone else as well, and thus people will get the message without an explicit statement, or

* Accept that the date isn't special outside the milieu, but their friends and enemies will get it. They are content sending a message to just those groups, rather than the public at large.

The Boston Marathon terrorist(s) haven't published what message they wished to send. So, they think it will be obvious to everyone, or at least their friends and enemies. That means they are probably not foreign - foreign terrorists know that we don't share their ideas of significant days, and are comparatively more eager to accept responsibility (that they're harder for the USG to track down probably is also a factor).

Now, is there an US subculture where Patriot's day, Tax day, and the Waco siege anniversary are special days? You bet there is. Could this subculture breed terrorists? It can, and it has [wikipedia.org].

It's very legitimate to draw a connection here, this is not just any day on the calendar. Even if this plant's explosion was a complete accident, it will be filled with significance to the anti-government conspiracy theorists centered on Waco. If they don't believe one of their own did it, they're probably going to think God/Fate did it. If the Boston Marathon terrorists come from this subculture, they couldn't have asked for something better. (If they don't, though - if for instance, against the odds, they're islamists - they're probably frustrated as hell at this, and will publish a manifesto or similar in the upcoming days to correct impressions).

First, my deepest condolences to all families and friends of dead and injured in this explosion. Apparently, some facts need further clarification. April 19th is a critical date in US history, since, whereas siege at Waco, TX ended on that date probably by coincidence (ATF went in on that particular day after 50 days of siege, negotiating and waiting), it was Tim McVeigh who "comemoraded" that day (and the deadly siege) two years later by bombing federal building in Oklahoma City. To do that he used masive

Fertilizer itself is inert, but under certain conditions it may explode. In any case after that bombing sale of fertilizer is severly restricded and I suppose non-farmers are not even capable of obtaining big amount of it. So, if somone wants to make a huge explosion by fertilizer the only other option (apart from stealing it) is to set it on fire wherever it may be.

What you are saying only applies to ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Ammonium phosphate is also commonly used as an ingredient for fertilizers, and not only won't explode--it's actually used in fire extinguishers.

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds of chemicals. It doesn't matter if they are produced in a factory or grown from manure in your back yard.... it is the same thing. Nitrates are one of those key ingredients that plants need in order to grow, and depending on soil conditions and the species of plant you are growing it may need those kind of fertilizers.

In fact, in earlier times people would literally sell their cess pool contents (not really septic tanks, but the same general construction) to Nitrate manufacturers for the purpose of extracting the Nitrogen compounds to be used in explosives. Cheaper ways of getting that accomplished can be had today, but in theory you could use the stuff that is flowing out of your toilet if you cared.

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds of chemicals.

You're right and you're wrong. In theory, you're right. You look at what the plant needs and you give it that. But in proper practice, you're wrong. You simply return the shit to the soil and the system works cyclically, if you plant guilds. It's monocultural so-called "green revolution" farming (which turns nations and indeed whole continents brown) which causes soil depletion. Most of these crops aren't even rotated any more!

In fact, in earlier times people would literally sell their cess pool contents (not really septic tanks, but the same general construction) to Nitrate manufacturers for the purpose of extracting the Nitrogen compounds to be used in explosives. Cheaper ways of getting that accomplished can be had today, but in theory you could use the stuff that is flowing out of your toilet if you cared.

We could be using AIWPS [sdsu.edu] to convert our waste into fertilizer, algae as a fuel feedstock, and methane gas, while cutting our water use. Or we could use composting toilets [openideo.com] to turn crap into soil directly without any special facilities. By adding compost to your crap and letting it sit for a year (with occasional aeration) you turn it into soil that you can lift out of the digester by hand if you choose, it's that well-cooked.

The simple fact is that we only need to produce industrial fertilizers with an explosion risk because we are engaging in inherently destructive farming practices instead of employing a cyclical system which existed before we did.

You make it sound like any fertilizer will work in any situation as a "one size fits all" position. That isn't how you grow plants, which needs a much more balanced approach and several different kinds chemicals.

I don't know where you get that conclusion from. The prior poster asserted that ALL fertilizer is explosive, and I merely pointed out that's false in the vast majority of cases. I was in fact pointing out that his "one size fits all" position was bunk.

Most fertilizers contain less than 5% nitrate nitrogen, since plants are able to utilize more than one form of nitrogen. Thus there are formulations using ammonium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, urea, biuret, etc.

Sure but Timothy McVeigh at least intended to attack the US federal government. Most of the people killed and injured here are people who he would have regarded as peers. His intention wasn't specifically to make things go bang. He had a specific message to send and the only message I see here is about worksite safety.

- How long do you think it would take the emergency services in a small town in central Texas (West is a VERY fucking small town of less than 3,000 people) to evacuate everyone in the area? There's not enough fucking personnel to make door-to-door fast enough and even then stubborn fucks don't want to do what "TEH GUBMINTZERS!!!!" tell them to, even when it means they're going to get blown to shit and back.

Almost no one is watching broadcast TV these days. The emergency broadcast system is largely pointless. Even amongst backwoods hicks, a lot of them are watching satellite or on the internet (at whatever speed they can attain where they're at) rather than watching broadcast.

While terrorism has not been ruled out based on the ammonium nitrate in the fertilizer the plant produced it is suspected the water from the firefighter's hoses is what caused the explosion. The ammonium nitrate is handled in such as way as to keep it inert but the plant suffered a fire and ironically the water used to put out the fire is most likely what caused the ammonium nitrate to react. This video on YouTube [youtu.be] is a guy shooting video of the fire when the explosion occurs. For reference the OK City bombing had a small fraction of the amount of ammonium nitrate this plant had stored in the one tank that exploded. Remarkably a second tank did not explode and is preventing emergency personal from approaching the site for rescue and recovery efforts.

David Koresh may have been a child molester but the government chose to try to arrest him in his compound instead of when he went to town. The government double-down on stupid when they created a seige; and doubled-down on stupid again when they attacked. The fault w lies with the Federal Government for unnecessarily creating a seige and attacking the compound. It wasn't necessary. It was an excessive force.

Objectively speaking, the Waco incident was needless as it was. 1) What was being done at the compound was not illegal and amounts to government harrassment. 2) The government tends to be quite full of itself to the point that when someone pushes back, they tend to lose control.

For another example of such, do a search on "active duty soldier illegally disarmed and arrested" and especially find the Youtube video while it's still up. A couple of cops literally claimed they were above the law and one insisted he was enforcing the will of the people and it didn't matter what the law says.

But this is rather off-topic you know?

Anyway, I watched the video -- impressive. The blast was amazingly powerful and the child, despite being scared to death, handled herself pretty well too. I think the end game on this story is that it was industrial safety gone wrong. It happens too often.

A standoff meaning the people pushed back against tyranny and harrassment. What made it a stand off was that the notion that the government players could not and would not admit defeat. Once they start down a path, they can never ever back down and that's for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which is to maintain the perception that they never lose under any circumstances. Right vs wrong and Legal vs Illegal was never going to see any discussion in a court room once the chain of events got started.

If they wanted him in a court room, they had many other opportunities to snatch him up away from his arms and his bretheren.

At the end of the day, the government's case was never made, many assertions blaming the victims have been debunked and the teeth of the ATF have been all but removed.

The problem with the "resisting arrest" is that he is ALLOWED that by law if the LEOs aren't operating in a legal manner- even to the point of using deadly force if needed. See the Supreme Court decision on John Bad Elk v. United States - 177 U.S. 529 (1900) [justia.com] for more details there.

The LEOs violated 18 USC 242 [cornell.edu] and should be decorating a jail cell awaiting trial for the FELONIES they commited, caught on video. Since we're talking a deprivation of rights involving firearms if it were enforced, they'd be facing up to 10 years in a Fed Pen.

Well, we all know that the rule of law has been questionable for a long while in our country. Back in 1950's if you were black you had this problem, now its just escalated to anyone without official government sanction. Thanks for sharing your story.

I can see it now, in the CNN comments section: "wtf, what's up with all of these non-tech stories on slashdot"

And the conversation might evolve something like this:CNN Commenter A: "Wtf, what's up with all of these non-tech stories on slashdot"CNN Commenter B: "Wtf, is Slashdot?"CNN Commenter A: "It's a gossip forum where cellar-dwelling nerds go to whine about things when they get tired of adding to the summit of 'Tissue Mountain'."